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Tuesday, 15 October 2013

Book Review: Anywhere but Here by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Ever since his mom
died, Cole just feels stuck. His dad acts like a stranger, and Lauren,
his picture-perfect girlfriend of two years, doesn’t understand him
anymore. He can’t ditch his dad, so Cole breaks up with Lauren. She
doesn’t take the news very well, and Cole’s best friend won’t get off
his case about it.

Now more than ever, Cole wants to graduate and
leave his small, suffocating town. And everything is going according to
plan—until Cole discovers the one secret that could keep him
there…forever.

Anywhere
But Here could have been brilliant. It could have been important and
influential because of the story it told but I just found certain
aspects of it lacking, and although it was enjoyable it didn’t wow me as
much as it could have.

This book touches on some tough subjects,
the death of a parent, alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy to name a few. I
think one of my issues with this book was that it used too many of those
hard to deal with subjects. I felt like it tries too hard to be series
and cool. It meant that I just couldn’t get emotionally involved and
the whole thing felt a little cold to me.

Another issue was
that I felt the characters didn’t learn anything from all they
experienced. The characters were all complex and troubled but they
gained nothing. I think if you are going to tackle subjects such as
these there has to be a learning curve and the characters have to come
out better for it at the end. I am not quite sure this book achieves
that. Having the main character realise that his home town is not that
bad was not enough considering the seriousness of a lot of the
situations.

I thought the writing was strong and that Tanya Lloyd
Kyi created a nice atmosphere. I got through this book really quickly
and it kept my attention from beginning to end. It was a nice smooth
read and there was little about the actual writing that bothered me.

The
characters were alright. I found Cole to be extremely self-centred, he
rarely thought of anyone but himself. He never really saw things from
other people’s point of view and that was something that didn’t really
change throughout the book. His best friend seemed a little dull and
the girls were sex driven and not very well rounded. The only fully
developed character was Cole and I didn’t like him all that much.

Anywhere
but here had some good parts and some bad parts. It is a quick read that fans
of fairly non-romantic contemporary YA might enjoy.

3 stars

Published
October 15th 2013
by Simon Pulse. A free copy of this book was provided for review. Cover image taken from Goodreads.